The existing utilities, such as water/sewage, electricity, gas, and heating/air-conditioning, have been recognized as social accommodation equipment provided by a local administrator (government). Accordingly, to use utility service has been performed in the form of paying a demanded bill after using provided service without a consumer's rational selection. Furthermore, a utility system must be managed in the entire system's respect as an organic connection relationship, but a supplier and a consumer for each utility have a 1:1 relationship. A concept that came into being existence in order to solve the existing utility system problems, a stably energy supply, an expected increase of electricity demands according to electric vehicle technology, a restriction to carbon emissions according to Kyoto protocol, environmental protection, and a need for the use of new and renewal energy is a smart grid.
The smart grid manages a utility system not as a part, but as the whole. Utilities and energy resources do not exist only in one form. The utilities and energy resources are converted into various forms in production, transfer, use, and processing processes. The smart grid adopts a method of reducing the entire consumption of energy by managing this flow on the whole. Furthermore, in order to stably supply energy, the smart grid is trying to find a method of converting the existing system, forming ‘peak+extra’ equipment, into a system for lowering the peak and uniformly maintaining the total energy consumption. Here, a Demand Response (hereinafter referred to as a ‘DR’) concept comes into being existence.
The DR refers to a concept in which a customer is provided with compensation (incentives, a bill, etc.) information on a utility use so that the customer can control demands for himself. The core factors of the DR include a CBL, demand prediction, and a DR billing plan.
First, a CBL has to be calculated by analyzing the existing use form of a user and demands have to be predicted based on the calculated CBL. Furthermore, a DR billing plan for lowering demands up to a target level based on the predicted demands has to be provided.
In general, information provided by a DR system becomes a usage bill that is most sensitive to a user. However, information generated by all the smart grid systems is various, and the amount of reduction of an actual bill is not great. Compensation for active management has been known as being a bill of a meager level.
A representative one of pieces of information generated by the smart grid system may be an Eco Index (EI). The EI is an index obtained by converting a degree that an environment is protected and damaged (polluted) from a viewpoint of utility generation/use. A representative example of the index is carbon emissions, etc.
In a smart grid environment, peak management is performed according to the DR policy of a customer. A DR system provides a user with information and expects the user's active participation through economic and eco-friendly consciousness.
In the existing DR system, however, first, provided information is restricted to a bill. As an example of an actual DR, the existing DR system has a significant cost reduction effect in terms of equipment investment, environmental preservation expenses, and a use bill from a national aspect, but actually has a bill reduction effect of several thousand Won per month for a consumer. It is insufficient for an active motive of customers. Information generated by the smart grid and the DR system includes various pieces of information, such as primary information, including the amount used, the amount planned, and a history, secondary information, including a bill, usage ranking, an EI, and an attained planned ratio, and bill ranking.
In the existing DR system, second, a method of providing information is simple (i.e., a form of post). In order to increase the response ratio of a consumer, it is necessary to collectively use a passive form of post and an active form of official announcement (push, notice, and alert) through various contact points.